Master your hooks, unlock massive leverage. Ignore them, hit walls everywhere.
When you nail your hooks, you get:
-Higher click-through rates on the same ad spend
-Better quality traffic that actually converts
-Access to colder audiences that previously didn't respond
-Ability to scale campaigns that would otherwise plateau
-Multiple winning angles instead of relying on one creative.
When you ignore hook testing, you waste ad spend on generic messaging, struggle to scale past initial warm audiences, get inconsistent performance across different campaigns, miss entire customer segments who need different psychological triggers, and watch campaigns work briefly then die without understanding why.
Most media buyers focus on everything except the first sentence. They optimize creative, audiences, budgets, landing pages - while completely ignoring the psychological key that determines whether anyone pays attention in the first place. The HOOK!
Rory discovered this the hard way. His client's winning campaign had been declining for three weeks straight. CPAs climbing, conversions dropping, ROAS tanking. He tried new audiences, different budgets, fresh creative concepts. Nothing worked.
Then he tested something simple: five different opening sentences. Same product, same creative, same everything - except the first line.
One hook outperformed their original by 400%.
Rory, a verified media buyer in our network, has been able to manage over $35M+ in ad spend by treating each hook as a psychological key to different customer segments. While other media buyers test entire creative variations and wonder why results are inconsistent, Rory isolates the single highest-impact variable and scales systematically.
That way he’s able to confidently know what worked and why (everytime).
I interviewed Rory to understand the exact hook testing system he's built to unlock hidden audience segments.
Rory's Hook Psychology System
After seeing this pattern across hundreds of campaigns, Rory discovered something counterintuitive. The same customer contains multiple psychological segments. A 28-year-old guy might respond to social proof on Monday ("Join 5,000 guys who upgraded their style") but urgency on Friday ("Last chance before the weekend").
Most media buyers create one customer avatar and write one hook. Rory realized you need multiple psychological entry points for the same person in different mental states.
His breakthrough: Different hooks don't attract different people - they attract the same people in different moments.
Step 1: Mine & Research From Data Across Your Business
"Every offer naturally has a few different avatars. We tend to fall into testing variations of what works instead of figuring out messaging for other customer types."
Here's what this looks like in practice.
Build your mental state map from actual customer data:
- Customer service emails: What problems do people mention before buying?
- Product reviews: What language do customers use to describe benefits?
- Sales calls: What objections and concerns come up repeatedly?
- Comments on your existing ads: What questions and reactions do people have?
- Competitor research: What hooks are getting engagement in your space?
Step 2: Build Your Hook Foundation
"For every copy variation I run, I'll test 3-5 hooks. The main copy and call-to-action are exactly the same - just that first sentence is different."
What this looks like in practice: Take your best-performing ad - body copy, creative, offer, CTA - everything stays identical. This becomes your testing foundation where only the opening sentence changes based on your customer researcj.
Step 3: Create Mental State Hooks
Use your customer research to create hooks targeting different psychological moments:
- Problem-aware hooks: From customer service data - "Struggling with shirts that don't fit right?"
- Solution-seeking hooks: From review language - "Finally, t-shirts that actually look good on you"
- Social validation hooks: From success stories - "Join 5,000 men who upgraded their style"
- Urgency-responsive hooks: From sales call patterns - "Last 48 hours to get yours"
- Curiosity-driven hooks: From ad comments - "The t-shirt that gets you compliments everywhere"
Step 4: Scale Winning Mental Triggers
"The difference in performance from just that one sentence will blow your mind. I recently tested 5 variations for a client - 4 did absolutely nothing, one did really well and became our top copy variation."
Track which psychological patterns consistently win across different campaigns, then apply those mental triggers to new products and audiences.
Try This
This week, take your best-performing ad and test these 5 psychological entry points:
- Problem-focused: "Struggling with [specific customer pain]?"
- Solution-focused: "Finally, [desired outcome] without [common obstacle]"
- Social proof: "[Number] customers already [achieved result]"
- Urgency-driven: "Last chance to [get benefit]"
- Curiosity-driven: "The [product] that [unexpected benefit]"
Keep everything else identical - same body copy, same CTA, same creative, same targeting. Launch all variations with equal budgets and track which psychological triggers unlock the highest performance.
The media buyers who master psychological hook testing will reach customer mental states their competitors never knew existed. Those who keep testing entirely new ads will never know which mental trigger actually drives their results. It’s more work, and more complicated. Keep things simple, and work to understand your customer better.
For more, watch the full Q&A interview with Rory here.
